Tag: Dispersed Power
“The problem in this world is to avoid a concentration of power—we must have a dispersion of power.” —Milton Friedman My last post was about the singular mission of public schools in America, which I believe should be instilling a deep sense of self-worth in every student. In that post I reported that the US…
READ ARTICLESometimes we get lost in complexity. The US Department of Education has a $68 billion annual budget from which it measures, sorts, records, studies, advocates for, and tracks public education in America. Yet ultimately, public education only needs a single mission, and it’s pretty much free to give and share—the pursuit of self-worth. This is…
READ ARTICLEThe following excerpts are from my book, The Seventh Power, detailing my visit with Hanna Soroka in 2017. The odds that Hanna Soroka would survive the winter of 1932 in Ukraine and live to see her eighth birthday were too small to calculate. Her parents were dead. Her younger brother and sister were also dead….
READ ARTICLEIn my last post I shared part of my interview with Mykola Onyshchanko, a survivor of the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933, during which millions of Ukrainian peasants were forcibly starved to death by Stalin’s Communist regime. Mykola, a young boy at the time, survived this period, and decades later, went on to become a…
READ ARTICLEThe following is an excerpt from my book, The Seventh Power: One CEO’s Journey into the Business of Shared Leadership. For centuries, societies across the globe have been systematically indoctrinated into the belief system that power, control, and higher authority live “out there” somewhere, beyond our reach, in a faraway capital, with a government leader,…
READ ARTICLEBelow is Whisper #8 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains. Mitakuye Oyasin is a Lakota phrase which translates to mean “All things are one thing” or “We are all brothers.”…
READ ARTICLEBelow is Whisper #7 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains. Traditional Western thought often depicts humanity as nature’s detached and isolated master. From this perspective the natural world surrounds but…
READ ARTICLEBelow is Whisper #6 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains. I was walking alone in the wilderness one evening when the epiphany I had been seeking materialized. It appeared suddenly,…
READ ARTICLE“Man should not be in the service of society; society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that’s what is threatening the world at this minute.” —Joseph Campbell The first mission of any company should be to make work meaningful, rewarding,…
READ ARTICLEIn this podcast, Kevin Hancock speaks with Strength For Your Purpose Podcast host Dr. Phil Finemore about shared leadership and dispersed power. They discuss Kevin’s journey and how he came to his philosophy that power should be dispersed. Kevin shares the outcomes for the company and the employees who work for Hancock Lumber. Finally, they…
READ ARTICLE“Winds in the east, mist blowing in, like something is brewing and about to begin. Can’t put me finger on what lies in store, but I think what’s to happen all happened before.” —Bert, Mary Poppins It chokes me up to see news footage of ordinary Ukrainian citizens fighting the Russian army, street to street…
READ ARTICLEIn this video, Kevin Hancock speaks with Deliberate Directions host Allison Dunn about shared leadership and dispersed power. They discuss what prompted his leadership philosophy to change and how the company has benefitted from these changes. He discusses Hancock Lumber’s participation in the Best Places to Work in Maine surveys, as well as the outcome…
READ ARTICLE“Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” —Jack Swigert It was April 13, 1970, and the crew of Apollo 13 was in trouble. “This is Houston. Say again, please.” An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks had crippled the spacecraft in mid-flight. “Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B bus…
READ ARTICLEThis blog post is a reprint from an article Kevin recently wrote for The Maine Monitor, published October 24, 2021 ______ There’s a lot to learn from babies, one step at a time The CEO of Hancock Lumber notes that infants learn to walk with minimal training or coaching. Leaders can structure their organizations with…
READ ARTICLE“Everyone is beautiful.” — Ariana Grande Jenny Edwards cleans and cares for the Hancock Lumber home office in Casco at night, after finishing her day job. I work an odd collection of hours, which brings me into the office at night once or twice a week. This is how Jenny and I met and then…
READ ARTICLE“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” —Buddha I was driving through Rapid City, South Dakota, when I saw him. Cresting the rolling hill in front of me appeared an all-white Ford pickup truck with a giant cross towering over the cab. Streamers…
READ ARTICLE“The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual.” —Carl Jung Speaking mostly in Lakota, Medicine Man begins to talk, then chant, then pray, then sing. Others, circled in darkness, echo in response. The heat within the hut quickly intensifies and the sweat comes…
READ ARTICLEThe Softwood Forest Products Buyer is reaching out to company leaders across the industry to solicit their input on key issues that impact overall business success. In this publication, Kevin Hancock shares his insights. “Some organizations collect leadership power into the bureaucratic center, where a few people can make the majority of the decisions for…
READ ARTICLE“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” —John Green I have trepidations about taking on this topic but even more about letting it go, so I’m diving in. Does civility in human dialogue and interaction matter? If it does matter, what causes it to disintegrate? How might it be elevated?…
READ ARTICLEIn 1938 the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was, in fact, “the Greatest Show on Earth.” Their annual tour opened in the spring of that year with a twenty-three-day sojurn at Madison Square Garden. The circus was so popular that it performed twice daily in New York (forty-six shows in all) before caravanning…
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